


No Refuge in Waking

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel Has Issues, Castiel in the Bunker, Destiel if you squint - Freeform, Dreamwalking, Gen, Headspace, Hell Trauma, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Nightmares, Season/Series 11, hell memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7606801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the interim between episodes 11x03 and 11x04.</p><p>Meant to be kind of a follow-up piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7345075">Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On</a>, though it's not necessary to read that story first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Refuge in Waking

Castiel loses track of the blows he lands on Dean's upturned face. Dean doesn't fight back; he just hangs on to Castiel's sleeve, gripping the fabric as if for dear life. Castiel doesn't care. Rowena's curse washes everything in red rage; all his thoughts are tainted by the color. He can't seem to stop, nor does he want to—it's all _fear fear fear_ and _again again_ and the scarlet tide of berserk fury.

"Cas," says Dean, the word coming out clotted, garbled through a thick mouthful of blood. Castiel's next blow breaks his nose.

Castiel hears and feels it simultaneously, the awful crunch of cartilage giving way before his curled fingers, and still he doesn't stop, just draws his hand back for another punch.

"Cas," Dean gets out again, the last word he will ever say, for Castiel strikes him again, in the side of the head, full-strength, crunching through the side of Dean's skull, feeling all the soft vital components within go pulping into mush under the immense power of the blow.

Dean's hold on his sleeve slackens. He topples over backwards, hitting the floor with a solid thump, lifeless, boneless.

Cas stands for a moment, staring at his friend's body, the red slowly draining out of his vision.

"Dean?" he says. His voice echoes in the dim and silent warehouse. His voice sounds so small.

"Sam," he says hoarsely, looking around. Surely Sam should be here, Sam is supposed to be here, Dean and Sam together were supposed to be safe, they were supposed to keep Castiel from hurting anyone—else.

" _Dean_ ," he says again, a black mist of horror rising up inside him. _What have I done what have I done what have I done_. He takes a step forward and falls to his knees beside Dean, reaching out to grip his shoulder, shaking him desperately. He slides one palm under his friend's lolling head, lifting it off the floor, trying not to look at the fist-sized crater of caved-in bone just above Dean's ear. "Dean," he babbles. "Dean, wake up, wake up, wake up—" _Wake up wake up wake up_.

There is the sound of a switch flicking, and harsh white light floods the warehouse. Castiel looks up, squinting in the sudden glow, as an auburn-haired woman in an exquisitely tailored pantsuit strides out from behind a stack of pallets.

"Naomi?" says Castiel, staring.

Naomi stops a few feet away and rests her hands on her hips, pursing her lips as she looks down at Dean's body. "Not bad," she remarks.

Words fail Castiel. Dean is a sinking weight in his arms. "I...you...I..." he sputters.

Naomi keeps talking. "And that punch at the end, _excellent_. Like a jackhammer to his skull. I used to think you were just weak, but you must have been holding back all that time. We just needed the right impetus." She frowns. "Though I admit I wasn't expecting a witch to be the key."

"Wait," says Cas, trembling with sudden, desperate hope. "If you're here...then this isn't the real Dean. This isn't him, this is...just one of those copies. You're making me practice. You're making me practice." He repeats himself with increasing volume, staring up at Naomi. Of course. Dean is a copy, and none of this is real. And yet he can't bring himself to let go of the fake Dean.

Naomi raises her eyebrows. "No, Castiel. This is the real Dean. Obviously."

Castiel hears himself make a low, wrecked sound. He shakes his head, as if denying Naomi will negate her words. He is gripping Dean's shoulder so tightly that he is afraid it will break.

"Trying to get you to kill him outside of a controlled environment was such a disaster," Naomi is saying. "This worked out so much better—"

"No. _No_. You're _dead_ ," says Castiel with sudden ferocity, glaring at the female angel. "I saw you, you were dead."

Naomi waves a graceful hand. "Let's not quibble over details." She snaps her fingers, and Castiel blinks. Dean's body is gone, as is the warehouse. The lights around him are closer, even brighter. He tugs at the cuffs which have appeared around his wrists, locking them to the padded arms of a half-reclined chair. A chair. He's back in Naomi's chair.

"You never left, Castiel," Naomi corrects, pushing up the sleeves of her jacket.

"I don't understand. I already killed Dean." Castiel's voice fractures on the last word. "What else do you want me to do?"

Naomi takes his chin in her hand. "I want you to kill him again," she says, voice hard. "And then I want you to kill him again. And again. And again." She cocks her head, thinking. "And maybe Sam too, while you're at it. We want everything to be neat."

Castiel shakes his head mutely, or at least, he tries to. Naomi's grip is like iron. _I won't_ , he thinks. _I won't hurt him, I won't, I won't_ —

"You already have. You will again. You always will." She holds him in place effortlessly. "You'll do as I say. You'll kill Dean. You'll kill Sam. You'll do it over and over and over again." She lets go of his chin, strokes the side of his face gently as he tries to pull away. "You never had any choice in the matter, Castiel. But even if you did, I think you'd—"

Castiel jerks awake with a wordless gasp, rising half out of his chair, surveying his surroundings wildly. The bunker is quiet and still, the warm yellow lamplight a bewildering contrast to the harsh white radiance of his nightmare. Naomi's cold blue eyes still hover in his mind's eye, refusing to fade. His angel blade slips out of his sleeve without conscious thought, falling into his open hand. The cool sting of the metal haft slapping his palm gives him a point of focus. He squeezes his fingers around the weapon and tries to slow his frantic thoughts.

 _It was a dream. Just a dream._ He slowly slides the angel blade back into his sleeve and buries his face in his hands. He can still feel Dean's temporal bone crumpling beneath his fist. _It was just a dream. Dean is alive. You didn't hurt him._ But of course, that last part isn't true. Sam might have arrived in time to save his brother, but Castiel can remember striking Dean across the face again and again, can remember the red fog of fury, the tunnel vision, the adrenaline urging him on. That much of it hadn't been a dream.

He scrubs the heels of his palms over his eyes, a gesture he picked up as a human and still uses on occasion, and looks around again.

He's in his room, or at least, he's in the spare room that Dean and Sam made up for him, in which he has spent the last couple of nights, ever since he dragged himself, ragged and bloody, down the bunker stairs. He isn't sure whether his extended habitation makes the room his, but he doubts it. None of the places he spent his nights when he was human were his to claim. And he had spent millennia in Heaven, and even that turned out not to be his.

Still, the room has been a comfort, although it is sparsely furnished as most of the bunker's living quarters are. There's a bed and a desk and a chair and a lamp, and not much else. Castiel doesn't mind the spareness—it's how the Winchesters seem to prefer life, and other accoutrements would be unnecessary anyway, now that he has his grace. He hasn't needed to sleep in the bed since Rowena removed her attack dog spell, though he knows his prolonged exposure to the witch's magic weakened him. He assumes that's why he finally dozed off tonight.

Castiel looks down at the desk, which is covered in papers and old scraps of parchment, somewhat in disarray now after his startled awakening. He picks up the top sheet, a wrinkled sheaf covered in old Sumerian cuneiform. He had been searching ancient texts for mentions of the Darkness when he fell asleep, hoping for some way to fight it, some kernel of information that could germinate into a plan. In some small way, he'd also hoped to have something to bring to the Winchesters in the morning. He's accepted so much from them, received their help in so many ways, and yet he still has nothing to offer. _Nothing except harm_ , he thinks, reflexively curling and uncurling his fingers as he feels, again, the crunch of bone beneath them.

***

Castiel tries to keep reading, but the text is discouragingly convoluted and seems to have no real references to the Darkness anyway. He sets the parchment down with a sigh. He's tired. His skin feels puckered and thin, as if the weakened grace beneath might spill out at any moment, as if he might come apart at the seams and dissipate, formless, drained, empty.

He eyes the bed. Perhaps it would be good to lie down for a while, and a rest could restore his concentration enough to finish the text. He wants to be thorough, no matter how slim the possibility of finding useful information. But the thought of dreaming again is...distasteful. The earlier nightmare lingers insidiously in the back of his mind, peppering his thoughts with visions of Dean's limp body. He knows it was a dream, he knows what dreams are, and yet a faint repetitive noise keeps catching at the edge of his awareness, and when he looks down he realizes that it's his right hand, trembling against the edge of the table.

Castiel sits for a moment longer, and then he rises and walks out of the room.

***

He reaches Sam's bedroom first. The door is ajar, a thin bar of light slanting into the room. Castiel hesitates briefly, then pokes his head in. Sam sleeps on his side, one arm slung beneath the pillow, the blanket tangled around his legs. His face looks peaceful, relaxed in repose. Castiel watches for a few seconds, suffused in a warm feeling that he identifies as gratitude. If Sam hadn't shown up when he did, would Castiel have killed Dean? He wants to think that Dean would have fought back, would have managed to overpower Castiel. That they wouldn't have wound up the way he and the unfortunate girl had: Dean pressed up against a wall, Castiel's hands choking the life out of him. He shivers, gripping the doorframe. _You didn't have to find out_ , he tells himself. _Because of Sam._ Sam had saved them both—Sam and his quick thinking, his resolve.

Castiel wants to cross the room, wants to shake Sam awake, wants to kneel before him and say, _thank you_. He wants to say, _I'm sorry I ever believed you unworthy_. He wants to say, _it took me far too long to realize how much goodness there was in you, how much strength. How much better you were—are—than I_.

He suspects Sam could use the sleep more than Castiel's belated sentiments, though. So he simply watches for another moment, assuring himself that the younger Winchester's sleep is deep and undisturbed, then withdraws and continues down the hallway.

Dean's door is closed, but the knob turns in Castiel's hand. He pushes it open and stands in the doorway. Unlike Sam, Dean sleeps on his back. His arms are folded over his midriff, the sheet tucked under them, moving gently with the rise and fall of his chest. He is sound asleep, and utterly and completely alive. A slow and soothing relief steals over Castiel, and he slowly loosens the fist he hadn't realized he'd been clenching.

Castiel had only intended to check, to reassure himself that Dean still breathed, that his nightmare was only that and nothing more. Now, however, without really consciously deciding to, he finds himself moving silently into the room. Dean twitches a little as Castiel's shadow slides over his face, and a faint furrow appears on his forehead, but he doesn't wake.

Castiel stands over Dean, studying his face, the ugly bruising that has begun to fade through variegated shades of purple and blue as it heals. The mottled colors mark the blows he landed on Dean, standing out like beacons, a map of his transgressions. The sight sends a stab of mingled guilt and pain through the base of Castiel's chest, and his hand is outstretched and halfway to Dean's face before he realizes what he's doing.

He freezes, two fingers raised, hovering in the air. He wants to do it—wants to press his fingers against Dean's temple, send out a surge of grace, wipe away the bruises, the half-healed split on Dean's lower lip, the swollen lump at the side of his jaw. He wants to erase the evidence of the damage he's done, but more than that, he wants Dean to be healed, _whole_. He has always wanted Dean to be whole, whatever it took.

But he remembers Dean's sharp denials of his offers of healing. Once in the warehouse, as Castiel, barely able to stand, sick with horror at what he had just done, had stumbled to his feet, stretching out his hand. Too ashamed to say anything more than _Dean_ , trying to put everything into that word, trying, without knowing how, to fix what he had just done. And Dean, blood trickling from his mouth and cheekbone, holding him up. _Cas, you can barely stand, let's just get back to the Bunker_. Dean holding him up, still not wise to the fact that Castiel would always hurt him, in the end.

And then again in the war room, turning away, raising his hand to ward off Castiel's, as if it were poison. _I had it coming_.

 _Had it coming, Dean?_ Cas thinks sadly, staring at his hand where it hovers, suspended in the space between him and the sleeping Winchester. He still doesn't understand Dean's logic, his comparison of the two situations—doesn't understand how Dean can equate finally succumbing to the Mark of Cain, the evil that had been gnawing at his soul for months, to Castiel's failure to resist Rowena's spell. How Dean can believe his efficient, emotionless incapacitation of Castiel in the Bunker is anywhere near as unforgiveable as Castiel's brutal beating of Dean in the warehouse. How Dean can overlook Castiel's blind adrenaline, his weakness, his rage, the loss of control that would have eventually led him to—Castiel doesn't let himself think the words, doesn't let himself feel the crack of Dean's skull.

 _Dean._ He slowly pulls back his fingers and curls his hand into a loose fist. _There are so few things I can do to help, and so many of them make things worse anyway, but this? This is healing, this is_ healing _, how can it_ —

He lets the thought go and slowly lowers his hand to his side. He thinks ruefully that the old Castiel would have found this whole situation nonsensical. The old Castiel would have reached forward without hesitation, jabbed two fingers into the center of Dean's forehead, and rebuilt every damaged cell from the inside out. And that course of action would have made the most sense; it _still_ makes the most sense.

So why doesn't he follow it now? Castiel asks himself the question silently, posing it as a philosophical problem, but it's a feeble ploy, because he knows why. He studies Dean's bruised face and this time his hand doesn't even twitch. He studies the discolored skin and does not move to heal it, because Dean Winchester has asked this of him. Because if he can do this, if he can do what Dean asks of him this one time, if he can watch Dean's faint winces of pain day by day and try to ignore the clenching feeling in his chest, he can come one step closer to earning Dean's trust, to proving himself worthy of it.

As to mock the futility of that hope, Dean suddenly hisses, " _No_."

Castiel jerks in surprise, but Dean's eyes are closed—he's asleep. But as Castiel watches, Dean shifts again, back arching. "No," he grunts again. His jaw has gone rigid, his arms slipping from their folded position and tensing against the sheets.

Of course—he's having a nightmare. Castiel chides himself for being so caught up in his own thoughts that he failed to notice. He watches, conflicted, as the nightmare seems to strengthen; a bead of sweat coalesces at Dean's temple, and his breathing becomes harsher, more uneven.

Castiel considers waking Dean, but that would involve explaining what Castiel was doing in his bedroom, and he doesn't feel up to describing his own earlier nightmare, nor is he sure how to craft an adequate account that avoids mentioning that fact.

He should just go, but as he starts to turn away Dean gasps out something, a mangled, unintelligible syllable, something that could be _Sam_ or maybe _Mom_ or maybe even _Cas_ , the last a possibility which Castiel lets himself think for a moment even though he knows better. Whatever the word, the sound is so filled with pain that Castiel pivots back to face the man and reaches out for a second time. Dean hasn't forbidden this. He can do this small thing.

All it takes is a touch on the shoulder, and then Castiel is blinking in a world ablaze with bloody red and bleached-bone-white. Hell. He takes a breath and gags on the heavy stench of sulfur. Dean's dreams have always been heavily sensory, and this one is thick with the smell of brimstone and the screams of the tormented. Castiel looks to his left and sees a rack that looks less like a man-made device and more like a jumble of spiny metal parts tangled around the limbs of one bloody, familiar human.

"Dean," says Castiel.

"Back off, angel," growls the skinny, hook-nosed monster whose hands are buried in Dean's thoracic cavity. Castiel's lip curls. The demon looks nothing like the vessels it took on Earth, but Alastair's reek is unmistakeable.

"He's mine, you know," Alastair says, leering.

"He is _not_ yours," snaps Castiel, because Dean Winchester belongs to sunlight and to the Impala, to Sam and rock music and pie and the open road, and not to this drooling, cruel-fingered creature.

The shape on the rack lifts its head.

"Cas," croaks Dean.

"Dean," says Castiel immediately. "Dean, this is merely a dream, do you understand? You can banish all this. You are not in Hell." He wants to snap his fingers and destroy the nightmare right then and there, but he also wants Dean to disperse the dream himself, to regain enough control to realize his surroundings aren't real. The more Dean does on his own now, the less likely he is to be troubled by this particular nightmare in the future.

Dean sucks in a slow breath that hisses through the gaping hole in his chest. "I can't do it, Cas," he mumbles. Most of his teeth are broken, but his eyes have been left untouched. Amid the red haze of Hell they are startlingly green. "I'm going to say yes to Alastair. I'll torture souls, I'll do anything, I can't survive this, I can't, I can't—" He breaks off with a cry of pain that cuts off almost immediately into a horrible, empty rattle.

Castiel looks back at Alastair, who is now holding a bloody knife in one hand and most of one of Dean's lungs in the other. The demon smiles fondly down at Dean, who is convulsing on the rack. "I'll put it back later, love," he croons. "So you can say yes."

"Dean," says Castiel, not taking his eyes off Alastair. "Please, concentrate. You are not in Hell."

Alastair rolls his many eyes and gestures with the knife. Dean's dream is suddenly populated with a dozen more demons, who surround the rack and its spasming occupant. The air is filled a raucous chorus of jeers and growls, a disconcerting mixture of human and inhuman sounds.

"Get back," Castiel orders, as they close in. He slips the angel blade out of his sleeve. His other hand finds Dean's where it is bound to the rack. Dean's palm is slick with blood, his fingers at odd angles. Castiel avoids the broken digits and closes his own fingers around Dean's wrist instead, squeezing gently. He feels Dean's hand twitch against his own, though whether in answer or as a side effect of asphyxiation, he isn't sure.

A hulking demon with seven horns reaches for Dean's legs, while something with three mouths and immense leathery wings bends to lap at the blood which drips from the sides of the rack.

" _Don't_ ," says Castiel. He brandishes the angel blade, but he can't defend Dean from every angle at once. There are far too many demons surrounding them, all brandishing a disturbing variety of tools. The seven-horned demon steps back—but now Alastair is winding his fingers through the bars of Dean's half-exposed ribcage, and as Castiel turns to point the blade at him, Dean's whole body jerks violently, in a silent, heaving scream. Castiel whirls to see that another demon, slipping up behind the rack, has managed to drive what looks like a railroad spike through the back of Dean's head. The bloody point protrudes from Dean's open mouth, a grotesque parody of a tongue.

Castiel loses his temper.

Leaning across Dean's torso, he cuts Alastair's throat with a single sweep of his blade. The other demons surge forward, a mass of gnashing teeth and reaching arms, but Castiel has control of the dream now, and he obliterates them with an angry flick of his wrist, wiping them from the scene. He lets the angel blade vanish back into his sleeve and turns to cover Dean's eyes with his free hand, and then he simply pushes his thoughts outwards and blasts the nightmare out of existence, folding color and light and sound down into tiny fragments, building them up again into new form.

Dean, healed, his hand still wrapped tightly around Castiel's, looks with wide eyes at the calm lake spread out before them and stumbles to his feet.

"Dean." Castiel relaxes his fingers, waits until Dean slowly does the same. He pulls his hand free and turns to look at Dean. "I'm so sorry. I should have done this immediately. I thought I could...never mind." He's too ashamed to explain, too angry with himself for presuming he could guide Dean out of the nightmare. _Arrogance_ , he thinks bitterly. He hadn't even been able to keep the demons at bay during his failed attempt, hadn't been able to protect Dean from the phantom agonies inflicted by the dreamscape of Hell.

"Cas." says Dean, sounding slightly befuddled. His face is unbruised, unmarked. "I was in Hell..."

"You were having a nightmare."

"You saved me," says Dean slowly.

Castiel sighs. "It was only a dream, Dean. I merely deconstructed the setting your unconscious mind had woven, and created a new setting to replace it." He gestures at the dock beneath their feet. "I thought you would find this location more peaceful."

Dean barely spares their surroundings a glance. His eyes are glowing in the pearly light of the overcast sky. "No. Cas. Back when I was in Hell for real. For forty years. You saved me." He utters the words with something akin to wonder.

"God ordered it," says Castiel haltingly, for lack of a better response.

Dean ignores him. "I never thanked you," he says.

Castiel's mouth quirks, because that isn't technically true. He remembers a younger Dean, brash and full of fire and fury, remembers a sarcastic _thanks for that_ and a serrated knife plunging into his chest.

"Cas," says Dean, pulling him from the memory. "Thank y—"

"I couldn't save you now, not really," Castiel interrupts hastily. If Dean thanks him now Castiel will split into fragments, right here by the side of the lake, under the solemn weight of it. He doesn't deserve Dean's gratitude, the warmth that pours from Dean's face like sunlight. He doesn't have the strength to live up to it. The Castiel that pulled the Righteous Man out of Hell was a warrior. This Castiel is—he doesn't know. More, and yet so much less. "I was here this time, but you will dream of Hell again, Dean—"

"Then be there the next time, too," says Dean, earnest, insistent. "Find me again. Bring us here again, Cas. Or anywhere." He waves carelessly at the water around them, his eyes never leaving Castiel's face. His voice clangs with sincerity; Castiel aches with the reverberation of it. He wonders how lucid this Dean is, and if Dean feels this way in his waking hours, or if it's just the chaotic, unfettered quality of the dream. He feels furtive, as if he is committing a crime by approaching Dean in this unguarded, unconscious state, wringing words from him that he knows Dean would never say awake.

 _I'll always find you_ , Castiel thinks. _It's not the finding that's the problem. I have nothing to offer once I've found you. You need so much more than me_. "You need sleep, Dean," he says gently, lifting his hand yet again. He failed Dean in the nightmare of Hell, caused more of the suffering he had hoped to prevent, but he can wipe it from Dean's memory now. That much he can do. "You won't remember this in the morning."

"Cas, _no_ —"

Dean grabs Castiel's wrist, tries to push it down, tries to step away, but Cas leans forward and lays his palm against Dean's forehead.

"I don't want to forget," Dean protests. He grabs Castiel's arm with his other hand as well, then trembles, as if unable to to pull away. He sways on the spot, backwards and then forwards, pressing his forehead into Castiel's palm. "I don't want to forget, Cas—I don't want to forget—"

"I don't want you to remember Hell," says Castiel soberly. _I don't want you to remember any of this_. He doesn't want to face Dean in the morning, knowing that Dean remembers this dream. He doesn't want to hear what Dean will say to him about it, or worse, what Dean won't say.

Dean has his hands locked around Castiel's wrist, eyes still wide, face impossibly open. "Cas," he says, his voice cracking. Just the single word, brimming with everything he isn't saying.

Hating himself, Castiel pushes against Dean's forehead and smoothes away remembrance of Hell and the lakeside with a thought. He buries nightmare and dream alike, far down in the folds of Dean's sleeping mind, and sends the man himself drifting away into dreamlessness, into the dark peace of deep sleep.

The dock fades away, the landscape turning a uniform grey, and Castiel slips out of Dean's mind and returns to the bedside. Dean's face is relaxed; his arms have stilled. His bruises are a sharp, ruthless reality, in contrast to the uninjured Dean who had stood by the lake and said _find me again_ with such infinite trust. Castiel rocks on the spot, run through by another pang of guilt.

 _You always will_. Naomi, inside his head. Maybe she had always been there. Of course, as it turns out, Castiel doesn't need her prying fingers in his mind. He lets the Winchesters down all on his own.

He looks down at Dean and for a moment, layered beneath the present contusions, he sees Dean's past injuries, every blow Castiel has ever dealt him, every injury Castiel was too slow or weak to prevent, spidering out above and beneath the skin, glowing, burning, a radioactive list of his sins.

And now Dean is facing the Darkness, and Castiel has nothing to offer him. _I'm barely an angel, Dean_ , he thinks, turning away, wishing Dean could hear his thoughts. _And I wasn't much of a human. You need so much more than what I am._ He closes Dean's door behind him and heads back toward his own room to go over the Sumerian text again.

***

In the morning, Castiel enters to kitchen to find Dean nursing a mug of coffee and Sam puttering around by the counter.

"Morning," says Dean cheerfully. At the counter, Sam is pouring cereal into a bowl.

"Good morning, Dean," Castiel rasps. He slept no more the previous night, and his eyes feel gritty from hours reading the tiny cuneiform. It's a curiously human feeling, but then, he has been hovering at various points on the border of angel and mortal for so long that by now he's used to it. He wonders idly if he will ever again feel wholly one thing or another.

"Cereal?" Sam offers, glancing over his shoulder at Castiel. He often offers Castiel food, although Castiel knows Sam is aware that he can no longer taste the way he did as a human. Castiel appreciates the gesture. It's a small, thoughtful, layered action, like many of Sam's actions.

"No, thank you," says Castiel. He isn't in the mood for molecules today. He finds a seat across the table from Dean, who takes a sip of coffee and regards Castiel thoughtfully. Castiel waits. Behind Dean, he can see Sam opening the silverware drawer to get a spoon.

"Oh, hey, Cas," Dean finally says, too casually. "Did you, um." He glances into the coffee, runs one hand self-consciously through his hair. "Did you come into my room last night?"

Sam drops his spoon.

"No," says Castiel, lying smoothly. He cocks his head, punishing himself for the falsehood by taking in every detail of the bruising on Dean's face.

"Right," says Dean, shifting and busying himself with the coffee mug. Sam is very pointedly keeping his back turned as he picks up his spoon. "That's, that's good. Be weird if you had." He grins weakly and doesn't quite meet Castiel's eyes. "We only just got you trained out of that whole watching people while they sleep thing."

"Right," Castiel echoes. He keeps his gaze fixed on Dean's face. _I'll do better, Dean_ , he promises silently, ignoring Naomi's cold contradiction in his head. _I won't hurt you again._ He remembers Dean looking pearly and earnest by the lake, _you saved me_ falling from his lips like a gift. _The next time, Dean, I'll be stronger_. _I swear to you._


End file.
